


Keep The Light On For Me

by Rollingjules



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Robots & Androids, Awkward Flirting, Gay Robots, Inspired by Fanart, Inspired by Wall-E (Movies), Last Person On Earth, Loneliness, Lonely Keith (Voltron), M/M, Post-Apocalypse, Strangers to Lovers
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-04-02
Updated: 2020-04-02
Packaged: 2021-02-28 17:48:02
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,136
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23441179
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rollingjules/pseuds/Rollingjules
Summary: The last active K.E.I.T.H. unit on Earth spends his days seeking out relics of the humans who left him, and the Earth, behind. But what happens when you're suddenly not the last being on Earth after all?
Relationships: Keith/Shiro (Voltron)
Comments: 13
Kudos: 58





	Keep The Light On For Me

**Author's Note:**

> This is a crusty old WIP I dusted off today during our quarantine because this chapter was close to being done even when I wrote it back in 2017 (yikes). That's what happens when you get stuck, lol, as I'm sure a lot of y'all have experienced.
> 
> It was inspired by an amazing fanart of Sheith as robots/androids in a Wall-E AU done by Seb/gummybois on twitter, written with his permission. Unfortunately Seb's @ doesn't seem to exist anymore, and I can't find him wherever he is currently! If you know what @ he's using these days or any of his other socials, please let me know so I can credit properly and link the superb art here!!! (I have a permalink to the original art tweet, but it's a dead @ so it turns up nothing.)

Keith only vaguely remembered seeing humans, and only from a great distance. In hurried lines scrambling past each other to board proud starships, in rushed huddles racing to safety from the dust storms screaming radio chatter into his sensors. Approaching them had been forbidden, the ceaseless toil of digging out their home his only instruction. Thinking about it, Keith wished he’d had the presence of mind to ignore his code back then. Only now, when he missed them, did he really have the means to do so.

The sheer expanse of the waste went on for miles and miles. This time of year the heat soaked into his chassis and his very touch melted the brittle, warped plastic debris that covered so much of their home.

**_His_** _home_ , he reminded himself. He’d stopped bothering to watch the skies long ago, so long ago it pained him to think about it.

No one answered his calls over the wireless networks, but the last satellites had fallen to the earth decades ago; anyone that might have heard him would have been just as alone as he was. His brethren – not that they’d ever had the chance to think of themselves as such – lay half-buried and mid-step wherever he went. When Keith was feeling morbid, he’d sit with them and pretend he was just as silent. At this point the idea of other stragglers like him, still holding out against time and neglect, seemed ridiculous.

He’d come to consciousness gradually, hundreds of years without diagnostics or maintenance testing slowly giving way to personality. Keith could now appreciate the secret gripes and jokes his programmers had written between lines of his code, walled off from the eyes of his machinery but not from the eyes of his thoughts. With a chuckle, it occurred to him that he’d apparently been a problem child. He wondered what his “parents” would think of him now.

It had started simply, almost innocently (as if robots could even have innocence without consciousness). After almost two hundred and fifty years of logging “no further instructions” every morning, Keith had stumbled upon an old outpost. It was protected from the angry desert winds and scorching rays by the remnants of a massive downed satellite, or perhaps and old waystation. He’d heard the first human voice in centuries and paid close attention - but not a lot was useful at first. Determined to decode the message, he had played the files over and over searching for their meaning.

The first thing he really _remembered,_ rather than stored in his memory, was feeling deeply moved. He had realized it wasn’t orders at all – it was _music_ , a concept he’d understood only since that moment, and that realization had sent his head spinning. Awareness broke over him like overwhelmed sensors and mismatched directives, conflicting lines of code and yet so much _more_. Like waking up from a long dream, but how did _he_ know what it meant to dream?

He’d navigated the world of humans on foot, mapped countless miles of desert and mountains of trash. But for the first time, he understood the world of _humanity_. He puzzled through words, not just meaning but _significance_ becoming important to him like never before. Clinging to each bit of thought and instinct, Keith had stumbled through sentience with only the echoes of mankind to teach him how to feel.

He did what he could to make his solitary existence more livable. A service hangar had become his home – a different kind of home, and humans seemed to have so _many_. The pods and cubicles that had ‘birthed’ hundreds of units like him had been taken over, each one now filled with careful collections and little treasures. Some were a mystery to him, unsolvable puzzles that he’d mull over when the sun was down. Frail, colorful boxes of cardboard sometimes filled with tiny plastic pieces and bright boards, other times with little typed cards bearing questions that answered themselves. Maps of places he could easily locate with his own supply of data, but with unique scribbles, outlines, circles and notes; of a significance so personal Keith felt he would never understand. Someone decided _Broughton Street_ was important. Someone plotted a route to _Big Cypress National Preserve_. Keith felt he should preserve these memories, these scraps of history. Without them those places would have ceased to exist the moment the last human stepped off this planet.

_He_ wasn’t human by any means, but if these things stirred feeling in him then it made them _important_.

Keith found himself drawn to that same outpost often. He would sometimes imagine what its inhabitants might have been like, what missions of science or technology they would have embarked on from their little shack of computer towers and faded papers. He’d listen to their music, play it back as if to be closer to whoever had been here before. It seemed wrong to disturb it, almost enshrined and hidden away just like whoever it was could come back at any moment and pick up where they started from.

A low rumbling echoed in the distance as he sat on the ancient couch. He ruled out more dust storms or thunder, the almost metallic sound unlike anything he’d ever heard. His sensors realized what his consciousness couldn’t – a ship! But not like those the humans had fled on, not like the satellites plummeting from the sky, something entirely different! It was only a silhouette, obscured by the gritty clouds far above him, but whatever it was hurtled at a speed that seemed unreal. And yet it glided so effortlessly, almost floating through the atmosphere like it was a bird riding an updraft and not a glistening behemoth. By the sound of it the craft was an advanced titan-class, miles of sleek metal plating and a fusion core reactor.

But as fascinated as he was, Keith’s proximity alerts warned him it was barreling down on him.

As it descended from atmo he strained his sensors to focus on its movements. Keith was confused, not for the first time, by the contradiction of what he was seeing and what his sensors told him was happening. He kept his eyes trained on the ship as best he could, but the shack rattled and clattered with the shaking of the ground beneath it. The window wasn’t remotely big enough to get a good view. He leapt up from the dilapidated sofa and dashed out of the building.

Keith hurriedly picked his way through the wreckage outside the shack to get a better look. It was terrifying, the tremors sending rocks jittering across the surface and a hot wind blasting his chassis with ash and dust. As he struggled to make headway, he barely avoided getting sliced in half by a fallen solar panel wrenched screeching to the ground. He’d discovered that fear was a powerful survival instinct, but a smaller part of him realized morbidly that the horrible twisting metal noise would probably be what _he’d_ sound like when he dies, when he finally goes the way of everything else in the wasteland around him.

He followed the ship as best he could. Sliding down the sides of gritty sand dunes and avoiding the rocks big enough to trip him took up most of his attention, but the ship appeared to be slowing down. Familiar red laser scanners dotted the ground and danced in preprogrammed patterns around him. From what he’d read of the manuals he’d unearthed over the years, it was probably mapping the terrain and using the albedo of the rocks to determine the safest landing site in real-time. But the scope range was so _small_ , much smaller than any titan-class would need for a full landing. Cautious, Keith watched from a safe distance behind a rocky outcropping trying to figure out just what was going on.

The titan’s reverse engines engaged suddenly, slowing its momentum allowing it to coast to a slow rumbling halt. It hovered for a moment, a shadow in the clouds he still couldn’t focus on with all the dust and debris whipping through the smog around it. A sharp, echoing sound like a metal capsule cracking open pierced the silence and made Keith jump and grip the rock beneath him tighter.

Unceremoniously, some kind of small payload was dropped and set hurtling toward impact. That was all Keith could ascertain from a distance though; he’d need to get much closer to fully see what was happening in his desert. He leapt up and rand forward to get a better look, using his ocular zoom to try for a clearer view through the passing clouds of smog and sand overhead. Just as he began to give up following its path downward, the payload broke cloudcover, sending a chill through his metal. He recognized it immediately.

It was another bot.

Unfazed by the comet-like descent, the bot braced for landing. Its metal frame curled in tight, one knee tucked up and the other bent to brace upon impact. One arm folded to protect its power core, about where a human heart would be.

With a thunderous boom that nearly overwhelmed Keith’s sensors, the bot landed with one fist on the ground to brace itself, one knee still bent, its other leg splayed out into a three-point landing. It was… _incredible_. Just like heroes from the old movies Keith would watch, when it was lonely in his hangar with only his dead brothers for company. Just like the people he’d see on the screen on quiet nights spent learning what it meant to be human. The sand kicked up around the impact site made it _look_ like a movie, all drama and anticipation.

As the bot walked out of its own impact crater, Keith recognized the telltale laser reticle of a scanner bot passing over the ground around it. But what was it scanning for? The desert was empty. At his most desperate, Keith might even admit that the whole _world_ was empty. That much should have been obvious from the upper atmosphere, he would think.

Unable to stifle his curiosity, Keith edged closer. Slinking between rocks and trash heaps he made his way closer to the crater, closer to his new arrival. He could make out the its features now. Short-cropped microsensor strands where humans would have hair, a strong jaw, an intimidating and large frame that humans would call masculine but a sleek and elegant design. A feat of engineering and, Keith thought to himself, really fucking cool.

In his haste to get a better look at him, Keith hadn’t noticed he’d ceased hiding and come out into the open. Drawing closer, an alert tone blared from a tiny speaker in his guest’s shoulder. He whipped around, pinning Keith with a look that would be steely even if he weren’t made of metal. Keith froze, suddenly nervous. A tense few moments followed as neither of them moved, but suddenly, the visitor spoke.

“No threats detected.”

With that he turned from Keith, continuing his scan. Though it was emotionless, it felt almost like derision. A dismissal of something old and dirt-encrusted from something new and advanced.

“Hey!” Keith scrambled across the debris field after him, kicking up sand and sending flakes of thin plastic fluttering through the air in his wake. Wait!”

The stranger turned, his glinting grey eyes sharp as his optic sensors focused on Keith.

Keith panted as he skidded to a stop close to him; he should probably change the filter on his air intake. Getting winded like this was a problem. “Who are you?”

“Specialized Human Integration Reconnaissance Outfitter active unit 117-9875.” His lips formed a stern line as he stopped speaking. He gave Keith a very appraising look, probably scanning him more closely.

Keith waited awkwardly for him to speak again. He’d never had a real conversation before.

“Make and model unknown. Identify.” Somehow it seemed more like a command than conversation.

“I’m Keith. Are there more of your units in the area?” Looking around excitedly, Keith searched the horizon for any movement, any other craft in the skies. It was just as empty as it always had been, almost like Shiro and the vessel that carried him had never been there.

A humming sound like disapproval left Shiro’s throat. “No database results returned. **_Identify_**.”

The scrutiny was beginning to make Keith uncomfortable, but he reminded himself to mind his manners.

He sighed.

“K. E. I. T. H. unit. _Keith_.”

To his relief, the stern look faded into understanding. “Recognized. Kinetic Excess Independent Terrestrial Handler. Status report.”

“It’s nice to see someone else around. I’ve been pretty lonely…” he smiled, a bit wistful at first but turning more cheerful as Keith looked up at his visitor.

Shiro’s expression remained unchanged.

“Conditions unrecognized. Advise.”

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for tuning in! Hope you enjoyed. It was interesting to try and strike a balance of staying true to the source material while also giving Keith room to be Keith, now that we've laid the groundwork we'll be able to branch off more! Because after all I'm doing an AU, not a script rewrite of the movie itself lmao. The writing style for this is a bit different from my usual, let me know what you think! Find me on twitter at @lioslegbelts, and please put me in touch with Seb if you can!!!


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